28. Greer
Greer
This is my least favourite place in the hospital.
It’s the loudest.
The most chaotic.
The most unpredictable.
It’s another thing around here everyone makes assumptions about. They think I avoid coming down to the emergency room because I’m somehow above it, sitting up there on my award-winning-fellow pedestal, asking for images to be brought up to me instead of coming down for consults when I can avoid it.
But it’s not that.
Every time I get in the elevator, or walk down the stairs to get here, the phantom twinge starts in my ribs, the skin of my scar feels sensitive underneath my scrubs, and my heart starts to speed up.
I don’t have many memories of the accident—your brain can be beautiful that way.
But I remember the sounds. I remember the water. And I do remember being in an emergency room not unlike this one.
I hated the page when it came in, not just because it was from my least favourite place, but because it meant leaving Beckett alone there.
With his family and all the ways they don’t see him.
I see you. I know you . Those were things I tried to say, because I think he deserves to know them.
I hope he heard me.
Rounding the corner past the triage desk and the waiting room, I raise my eyebrows when I come to the first open exam room and the doctor kicked up against the wall. Dark hair curls across his forehead, eyes on his phone and stubbled cheekbones defined against wan, tawny skin.
“Dr. Rawdat.” I offer him a tight smile. “You needed a consult?”
“I didn’t call you for a consult.” He pushes off the wall, chart in hand, tipping his chin towards the open door.
I narrow my eyes, and I do feel a bit like the Dr. Roberts everyone thinks I am—that maybe I should tell him not to waste my time, because it’s a commodity and I’m busy.
It’s not that, really, I just don’t want to be here. In this place where I can feel my heart and these old breaks that still hurt all these years later.
But I do walk through the open door, and it all hurts even more.
My father’s the one in the bed, propped up against the uncomfortable pillows, ashen skin obscured behind an oxygen mask, feathers of his hair matted to his forehead, sleeves of his worn flannel rolled up, and IV lines trailing from his arm.
“Dad?” My voice catches in my throat.
“Acute pneumonia.” Dr. Rawdat offers me his chart.
I snatch it, flipping through the labs. “He’s a transplant recipient, are you sure it’s not—”
My father pulls down his oxygen mask, fingers slipping against the plastic. He inhales, and it goes on a bit too long, like he’s struggling for every little molecule of oxygen. His eyes close and he shakes his head, like he’s so tired and so weary. “It’s just a flu, Greer.”
“It’s not the flu, it’s pneumonia,” I bite out, barely sparing him a glance as my eyes track down the chart. “Put your mask back on.”
Stella isn’t here, but I know what she’d say if she was.
Be nice. We got a second chance, don’t waste it. He loves you. He’s trying.
No , my brain refutes. You gave him a piece of you, and it still wasn’t enough for him to prioritize you. To love you.
“Dr. Roberts.” There’s a faint hint of warning when Dr. Rawdat speaks. He turns to my father, and there’s more sympathy lining his face than there is on mine. “Henry, we’re going to talk outside for a minute. Hang tight.”
I try to offer my dad a smile, but the whole thing falls flat, and he’s not looking anyway. He’s got his oxygen mask back on, his eyes closed, resting his head against the pillows.
“Is he—” The words catch in my throat, and that empty space inside me echoes. “Is he rejecting—” I swallow. I was about to say my liver. But it’s not mine. I let someone take it from me. Pressing my eyes closed, I hand back the chart, pinch the bridge of my nose, and try again. “Is he rejecting the liver?”
“No, Dr. Roberts. That’s not why I paged you. I paged you because you’re his emergency contact.” He taps the chart. “We can run the labs again. But it’s all there. No abnormal biomarkers. No tenderness at the site. No jaundice. Nothing else you’d expect. He came in with flu-like symptoms. His blood was drawn, his labs were run, he had a chest x-ray, and it’s pneumonia.”
“Was it—” I press my palm against my rib cage. “He missed his meds for a few days last week.”
And you should have been by to check on them—on him—but you were too busy in Beckett’s bed.
Dr. Rawdat winces, and he looks at me like he feels a bit sorry for me. “Dr. Roberts. You know it doesn’t work like that. You know it better than me. That didn’t cause this. He’s immunocompromised, and it’s flu season.”
“I had a friend over at the house, and he wore a mask but—”
“Dr. Roberts,” he repeats, but it’s soft, and he gives a little shake of his head. “It’s flu season. He told me he goes to AA a few times a week? He could have easily picked something up there.”
“Sure,” I say quietly, nodding.
He still goes to all those meetings during flu season , my brain pipes up. Maybe he doesn’t care he’s putting himself at risk. Putting a piece of you at risk.
“I’ll discharge him as soon as his pulse ox is up, and the IV antibiotics are done. No long-term damage done.” Dr. Rawdat holds the chart up, but he tips his head, lips pulling to the side in concern. “Do you need me to call—”
“No.” I don’t even know who he was going to say, but I look up and give him a tight smile. “I’ll wait until he’s done his round of antibiotics.”
It’s not a question, and he doesn’t treat it like one. He tips his chin before leaving, taking the chart with all these things that medically tell us both what we need to know about what’s going on in my father’s body, even though I’m still not so sure.
I breathe in and out, alone in the hallway, before I turn and go back into my dad’s room.
I think I might feel the ghost of hands whispering across my calves, but I can’t give them life. As nice as they are, I can’t let them be real.
They did get a little too real, and look what happened.
“You didn’t text me,” I say quietly, sitting down in the chair beside the hospital bed.
He rolls his head across the pillows to face me, words muffled behind the mask. “You’re busy.”
It’s all over his face—traipsing across that too-prominent brow bone. Guilt, etched into all those features hewed this way by his life.
“I’m not—” I start, but I hear my voice rising. I swallow, press my fingers into my rib cage and try again. Reaching out, I brush his hair off his forehead. He does have a fever—it burns against my fingertips. “I’m not too busy for this.”
My father nods, tired. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
And I do mean that. It’s not his fault, not really.
It’s yours.
He shifts against the pillows, trying to sit up or maybe get comfortable against an uncomfortable bed, an uncomfortable room. An uncomfortable relationship with his daughter.
I wish my sister was here. She’s better with him—she always has been.
We’ve never really known how to be around each other, and whatever chasm exists between us yawns wider and wider each year.
I think, maybe, one of us is standing on the bridge, watching, and the other is in the car, sinking.
I’m not always sure who’s who.
Today, though, I do know. It’s me stuck in the car, water rising around me and biting at my skin.
It reaches my mouth, it slides down my throat and my lungs aspirate on his next words.
He blinks at me from behind the mask. “It’s okay if you can’t stay.”
My eyes burn. I don’t know if it’s tears or water from that sinking car I wipe away from my cheeks, staring determinedly ahead at the wall. “Of course I can. Just get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
I stay, even though it hurts.
This is why Beckett Davis can only be your friend.
Look what happens when you forget your lines. Your boundaries. Your rules.
Look what happens when you give yourself to people.